Amazing Spider-Man #20: Dawn of the Goblin Slayers

When looked at in its totality, it’s not hard to see the storytelling potential that led Joe Kelly down the route he went with the Earthbound side of The Amazing Spider-Man. Putting Norman Osborn in Peter’s shoes completely, allowing Ben Reilly to find himself without any villainous instigation, and getting to play around with the extended web of Spider-Heroes all have the same makings as a Knightfall or Reign of the Supermen–style storyline. Issue #20 of the run is the climax of this storyline, and unfortunately doesn’t quite coalesce into the emotionally impactful story it was trying to be.

That isn’t for a lack of trying, and it certainly is effective on a surface level in cleaning up so much about the characterization of Ben and Norman that readers have bemoaned for the last few years. Much of that criticism, including my own, came from previous creative teams not going the distance in giving their changes depth. The coalition of these two characters coming together in this one arc to finally get that proper developmental exploration was not just exciting, but cuttingly relevant in the modern landscape of Spider-Man stories.

With Ben specifically, the towel here is just kind of thrown in. Our time with him is rather mundane, leading to him simply deciding that being Peter isn’t quite right, letting go of his rage toward him from the end of Beyond and moving on with his life. It’s a sweet moment, and one folks have been begging for since his newfound identity of Chasm became a vehicle for action figure sales instead of an exploration of his fractured ego through a secondary identity. On its own, it’s a clean way of sending him off into the sun with the love of his life around his arm and a smile on his face.

Looking at how Norman’s story wound up unfolding, aside from Miles, the inconsequential presence of characters that haven’t been relevant to Peter or Norman since the Spencer run is striking—and even then, they were mostly set dressing for the action more than anything else. Their dramatic impetus is never explored. Ben could have filled their role, and with the same character trajectory as Norman, really could have raised the thematic richness of both of their journeys if the “bad Spider-Man” and the now “good Green Goblin” came to help each other find their way. Divorcing the two from each other has left this arc feeling less than the sum of its parts.

One could argue that “Spider-Gwen” played an important emotional role for Norman in terms of visualizing his greatest mistakes, but Kelly didn’t seem interested in developing their relationship—not that it seems anyone is really interested in developing the connections between Peter Parker’s core world and those of the offshoot characters. Specifically using this Gwen Stacy variant for emotional manipulation has no doubt been done to death (see The Clone Conspiracy and the latter half of Nick Spencer’s aforementioned run on the title). Still, it would have held so much more weight if Norman was specifically brought to task by either her or Ben, given the deep history of him destroying their lives time and time again. Leaving it to the Poochie Brigade simply diluted both journeys, and was thoroughly disappointing as a result.

This two-part climax, dubbed “Dawn of the Gobin Slayers,” still has one more half to go in which my criticisms of the direction for Ben’s resolution specifically could be rectified and I sincerely hope they are. As it stands now however, I just don’t see this landing as a result of its construction.

On a bright note, the continued threading of Roderick Kingsley as the main antagonist for Norman in this run continues to pay off with cartoonishly fun action that forces Norman to reconcile with his own journey of self-acceptance. Seeking penance through heroism, and being forced to realize he will never be able to achieve that in the eyes of others, is harrowing. The action sequence at the center of this issue is really great when focused on Norman, and watching his rage rise and fall during the conflict was incredibly tense.

Kelly has always been great at utilizing small moments of superhero action in a way that makes the most personal of fights feel like their stakes are world ending. John Romita Jr. illustrates it all with a really great sense of weight and violence, something he’s always been very good at. There are some fill-in pages as well from Todd Nauck and Paco Diaz that look good enough, but do break you out of the natural rhythm Romita established for a good majority of the book. I’m sure there were rewrites or last-minute changes that required extra help to get it done, but I do wish they had tried to get an artist who better matched his style. Over